Fluke
by AmicableAlien
Summary: Finding the right woman was a matter of chance, of luck. A fluke. Henry Talbot had seen it happen before. He did not believe it could happen again. [Pre-Downton]
1. chapter 1

**FLUKE**

* * *

FLUKE: _a surprising occurrence, achieved by luck, rather than skill_

* * *

 **Brancaster, 1924**

"I don't even like shooting."

The Honourable Mr Charles Rodgers rolled his eyes. Stretching out like a Roman emperor across the passenger seat, he tapped his cigarette over the side of the motor, releasing a long stream of ash. His driver, catching him from the corner of his eye, scowled further.

"Lord sakes' Charlie, you'll ruin the damn paintwork."

"Puff up, old boy." Charlie brushed off the grumbling with the ease of one long accustomed to its tones. "It's already busted half to Bedlam from the gravel. As for your shooting, I seem to remember you were quite a hand with the rifles back in the day."

"Four years of shooting human beings- damn it all!"

The Sunbeam racer leapt across the road like a startled deer with one wrench of the wheel. An astonished carter, tucked into the tight bend of the road, dragged his old horse up to a screaming halt. His jaw to the earth, he stared at the car roaring past, the driver's curse ringing in his ears.

"Bloody fool!" Strangely, the brush with death acted as an opiate on the driver. The dark eyes were easier as they glanced at his friend. Charlie examined the tip of his cigarette and hid his grin.

Henry Ignatius Talbot let out a reluctant chuckle. His foot eased up on the throttle, settling the car down to an easy lope along the Northumbrian backroads. "You shouldn't have insisted I come."

"Rubbish. You've been moping around London like a bally raincloud ever since we got back from Germany. What with Engelbach pushing testing out until February and the racing season not for months, what else do you have to do?"

"Oh, I don't know. Play the gentleman. Sip port and expound on my opinions in Parliament. Puff noxious cigars."

"It's a cigarette, thank you, and I enjoy the smell of Woodbines now. Besides, you leave the opinionating to your father. Unless he's pushing you to take his seat again?"

"Rather." The clipped answer sent a sympathetic grimace across Charlie's face. "Fortunately, my views are more Liberal than Conservative and therefore out of step with the county set who elect the old boy every sitting."

"Well, a word of warning…" Charlie gripped the safety strap of the car as Henry took the next corner on a hairpin turn. "We're heading to conservative country now. You might want to mind your Ps and Qs if you don't want your head mounted alongside the grouse and pheasants."

"Some kind of friend of yours, isn't it? Banker?"

"Rather more than a banker!" Flicking the butt of his first Woodbine to the verge, Charlie reached down to the pockets of his greatcoat for another. "Lord Sinderby- and don't you dare forget the title- governs Aldridge's, that banking house in London. Could buy and sell the Empire before breakfast and still have enough left over for a small European state or two. He's rented out Brancaster castle for the grouse and his son, Atticus, invited us for a shoot."

"Invited _you_. Friend of yours?"

"More Frank's cut than mine. They were in school together. Stayed at our house once or twice in the holidays." Charlie fell silent for a moment, the way he always did at the mention of his younger brother. "He wrote to our mother after… well."

He bent his head, the better to locate his cigarette case. When he spoke, the words came out muffled. "Decent chap. Decent thing to do."

Even though it was pointless, Charlie's head still being bent over his pockets for that elusive cigarette, Henry nodded.

The twisting country road widened out into a small green, bounded by stone walls. A black and white signpost pointed in several directions. The point north, the one Charlie indicated, simply read "Castle". It was another five miles.

Henry had slowed as they came into the green. Now, he accelerated again, grateful that the wide, well-tended toll road was the one they had to travel. "Not too many other castles in these parts I take it?"

"See for yourself. There's a viewpoint coming up on the left."

"Where? Ah."

The car drew in to the side of the road in a swirl and clatter of tiny stones. Charlie leant back in his seat and waved the unlit Woodbine through the gap in the trees. "Perceive the ancient seat of Hexham."

Henry twisted his head around, leaving the ignition purring in the car. With a low whistle, he tilted back the brim of his cap, the better to take in the sprawling edifice dominating the hillside opposite. "Lord."

Charlie shook his head, a small smile on his face. "Bastion of Englishness against the Scottish hordes. Hexhams were Border scrappers and bullyboys since the Conqueror."

"Some bastion." Henry followed the long line of the curtain wall from edge to edge. The buttresses and outbuildings, tacked on to the side willy-nilly to accommodate the overspill of past generations, were too numerous to count. In the centre, squat and square with a set of battlements like the hunched shoulders of a bare-fist boxer, rose the main tower. "They don't build these kinds of _chateaux_ in France."

"Don't have to deal with screaming hordes of Scotsmen in France. It will no doubt surprise you to discover," Charlie swung his arm around and grinned. "That every man-jack of the Hexham brood has a tendency to be short and square."

Henry laughed. It came out a little rusty, something he refused to consider too deeply at that moment. "Not in the least. Haven't you read that Austrian chap, Freud? Overcompensation."

"Leave the funny business to you, old chap. You can weave your spell on the ladies with your Freuds and Fredericks. I'm happy just to let off a few rounds and bag a bird or two for my supper."

"Sing for my supper, is it? Give the country misses something to twitter over?" Catching the reproachful look on his friend's face, Henry let out a puff of irritation. Even to his own ears, the acidic tone had been a little too sharp.

Jabbing the ignition in a way that would have his racing companions wincing with physical pain, he kickstarted the motor car into a roar. The wheels jackknifed to the right, spitting up grass and gravel. In the passenger seat, Charlie choked on a lungful of ash as the motor swung into the laneway and zipped onto the country lane.

"Steady on, Harry!" The last Woodbine ripped away in the tailwind of his friend's furious take-off, Charlie slapped his hand on his hat and muttered a curse against temperamental racers. "Christ, it was a joke!"

"Poor bloody taste!" The engine made it hard to distinguish the words over the rumble of oil and gears.

"Don't blame me that you've been like a poked bear since you left Berlin. And, for God's sake, don't bite at Aldridge and his brood the way you've been sniping at me." Beyond enduring his friend's unpredictable moods, Charlie hunched into the passenger seat like an old dowager counting her pearls.

"Berlin has nothing to do with it."

"Not half. Six weeks playing happy families and you've dropped yourself into a crisis of bloody faith or some sort."

"Charlie…"

"But for God's sake, buck up out of your funk before we reach the bally castle. There's some gathering of the clans going on up there with Honoured-this and Lording-that from all over the county. The last thing we need to do is toss up like a pair of ill-bred schoolboys. Sinderby will set the dogs on us. Or," Charlie finished with a morose drop in his voice. "That bally butler."

"Then, as the old saying goes, if I can say nothing nice, I will say nothing at all." Ignoring the groan from the passenger seat, Henry craned his head around the windscreen to check the oncoming corner. "So who is part of this great horde? Lord, how can people stand to holiday _en famille_ like that?"

"What was that about saying nothing nice…"

"Get on with it, Charlie."

"The new bride, the former Lady Rose MacClare, daughter of the Marquess of Flintshire, etcetera, etcetera… Who, according to my mother's maid- don't you dare comment, Talbot, or I will kick you from this dratted motor- is 'right lovely, golden as a sunbeam and free with her pennies for the children'."

"If what you say is true about the banking, she can well afford to be generous."

"Yes, but don't interrupt. She's hauled her uncle, aunt and assorted cousins up from Yorkshire to spend a week with the birds. Presumably also to spare her too much of her father-in-law's company. Sinderby took the castle three years ago as well. The village still hasn't recovered."

"A martinet then?"

"Oh, you know the type."

Henry thought back to Berlin and grimaced. He did indeed.

"And these Yorkshire cousins? Bumpkins or bacchalians?"

"Neither, from what I can gather. The Earl of Grantham? Heard of him?"

"Come on, Charlie, don't look to me for Debrett's Peerage. Aunt Shackleton might have a clue but I certainly don't. Not unless he has a fascination for racing cars."

"More of the huntin', shootin', fishin' type, I'd say. Married an American? Three… no, two daughters. Think the eldest came out with m'sister Jane, before the war. Martha? Miriam?"

"Do you honestly expect me to know? Charlie boy, debs were never my forte, even when I _wasn't_ old enough to father them."

"If she came out with Jane, she's no spring chicken. I'd say she's left her days whirling around Queen Charlotte's ball behind."

"A deb is always a deb until she's a dowager. And then she's a terror. If you please, I beg to be spared from both." Henry tipped the brim of his homburg towards his musing friend. The right side of his lips twisted in that sardonic smirk that, Charlie privately thought, brought to mind Cesare Borgia or Niccolo Machiavelli. One of the damned Italians anyway, hiding murder behind manners.

Charlie shrugged. Feeling the bite of another craving, he began to pat around the dashboard in vain hope. "Here I was, thinking you liked women."

"Women, yes. In their place and at the correct time."

"If Otto was here," Charlie gave the dashboard a final thump, more in wistful thinking than expectation. Part of a small smoking compartment jumped down, revealing a hidden alcove. "He would say the best women don't keep to their place and always arrive at the worst possible time."

"' _Fluke, my dear Harry_!'" Henry dropped into their old friend's thick German accent. For a moment, it was as though a blonde ghost hung his head between the two men, his exuberant grin beaming at the pair of them. "' _A chance! Fate and destiny!_ ' Lot of rot."

"Not always." Charlie rooted around in the compartment. He let out a shout of delight and pulled up his hand. A final packet of cigarettes, long forgotten until now, was pinched between his fingers. "Hah! Fluke!"

"Last one of the day, old boy." Henry retorted as he spun the wheel in a wide circle and swept between the arches of. Brancaster's ancient gatehouse walls.

* * *

 **I always think Henry Talbot gets a bit of short shrift as a love interest because the Mary/Matthew epic romance dominated the Downton world for so long. So I've been brewing over this small prequel AU fic for Henry for a long while and only recently gathered it together enough to start posting chapters. I'm still brewing over the Anthony Strallan Charles Blake fanfics... and _Winter Rose_ will come together. Eventually. Soon... **

**hope you enjoy and thank you for reading!**


	2. Chapter 2

**FLUKE**

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 _Baden Baden, Germany_

 _June, 1912_

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"I'm in love."

"Oh, Christ." Charlie dropped his head onto the gleaming bonnet of his car. "Here we go again."

"Here we go where again?"

"Otto's in love."

"I tell you, _mein Englisches Arschloch_ , this is veritably the truth. Harry," The blonde man spun around, the tails of his driving coat flapping in the breeze. "Speak to this Philistine."

"Well, Charlie, you might want to look at it this way." Henry Talbot settled back on the camp chair Burton, Charlie's manservant had kindly organised, and pretended to concentrate on his cigarette. "You've been looking for reasons to disqualify Otto for years. Now's your chance."

" _Was_?" As always, the slightest threat to his racing was enough to pull Otto out of his dramatics. "What do you say? _Wie so das_?"

"Well, old chap, it's perfectly simple." Having squinted down the barrel end of his Woodbine cigarette and brushed off the loose tobacco strands, Henry set the tube between his lips and dug about for box of matches. "Disqualification for reasons of mental instability."

Charlie barked a laugh, straightening up from his crouch of despair over the bonnet of his Fiat racer. "I would enjoy reporting that!"

"Petty jealousies!" The German racer scoffed at them both. His feet planted squarely in the green turf, he dug his fists into the voluminous pockets of his coat and scowled down at the dark, long-legged Englishman. "You are still painful after the loss at the Voiturette, eh?"

" _Sore_ , Otto. Sore. My god, how long have we been friends? Your English is as bad as when we met in '05."

"Pah! But always _besser als_ your German, no, Harry? _Mein Gott_ , to hear the beautiful language of Schiller and Silesius and Herder so maligned with your _furchtbar_ English mangling..."

"Pax! Shut up, Otto, and let Talbot speak, for the love of Christ!"

"As I was about to say..." Coming up empty in his pockets, Henry nipped the cigarette from his lips. Jabbing it in Otto's direction, he kept his face and voice as serious as he dared against the bristling indignation of his friend. "In my opinion, our dear friend Otto Lauda should disqualify himself for reasons of insanity."

"Insanity? It is you who are mad, Harry, if you imagine that I should step aside to let amateurs like you and Charlie-"

"...because after all," Henry continued smoothly over Otto's spluttering. "What is the definition of insanity but performing the same actions over and over again and expecting a different result?"

As Otto crashed into astonished silence, Henry craned past him to the stocky figure of Burton in his tan overalls. "I say, Burton, you don't have a light, do you?"

"Right here, sir." His pale, frog-like face pressed into bland obedience, Charlie's manservant and general factotum appeared with a thin flame flickering above his thumb. Burton specialised in inscrutability but Henry thought he could detect a flicker of amusement in the small deep-set eyes.

"Excellent. Thanks."

Henry drew quickly on the flame until the first sting of nicotine flicked the back of his lungs. Turning back, he saw Charlie had stolen his campstool and was leaning back against the convenient oak tree.

The verbal sparring matches between Henry and Otto were a constant source of amusement for the other Englishman. More shy than the self-assured Henry, quieter than the exuberant Otto, he was content to settle in their shadows, tagging along with one or other them to whichever race next took their fancy.

The grin on his face left Henry in little doubt that Charlie planned to enjoy this particular encounter enormously.

"I do not understand you." Otto's voice, Henry thought, always went a timbre higher when he tried to sound dignified. "I tell you, my heart is stolen. _Gestohlen_. I will not sleep. I will not eat. It has never been thus."

"Well, with that statement I do agree. I don't think seasickness or even the plague has ever turned you away from your five o'clock _küchen_."

"I care nothing for such things." Otto tugged on his lapels and tilted his chin. "I am in love."

"Charlie."

"Yes, Harry, old boy?"

"Do you remember the name of that rather fetching widow down in Valciennes at Christmas time? The redhead, the one with the _chateau_ covered in lilac and..."

"Diane du Pelletier." Charlie exhaled the name on a sigh. "Marvellous breasts. Like two winter peaches, just rising up under that black lace gown."

"That's the one." Henry flicked the first shadows of ash from his cigarette tip. It glimmered in the evening sunshine like a firecracker's sparks. He slipped the glowing tip back up to his mouth, hiding his grin with the carrying hand. "Fascinated by your... motor, wasn't she, Otto, old chap?"

"Needed a private tour, as I recall." Charlie's smirk was not so hidden. "At midnight, of all strange and unusual- hey!"

" _Arschloch_."

Otto flung his soft motoring cap - googles and all- at his friend's head. The heavy eyeglasses thudded in the close and dangerous vicinity of Charlie's sunburnt nose. The other man yelped, coming close to toppling off the flimsy stool in his own defence.

Otto sighed. He raced restless fingers through his sweat-darkened blonde hair until it stood on end like a bush. "Very well. I will admit, my history, it is not the story of a moral crusader-"

"Now that's an understatement."

"And as a sign of my friendship with you, Harry, I will not bring to mind the sister of that American idiot who lost so badly at cards. No, I will not even mention how I found her wandering the corridors, only three feet from your bedroom door at two o'clock in the morning and she wearing-"

"Speak now and be damned, or forever hold your peace."

" _Also,_ I will be silent. But this, you must understand, is serious. She is an angel, _ein Engel._ I must speak with her. It is an imperative, _verstehst du?_ "

"Then speak with her." Charlie, no longer in imminent danger of being brained by a pair of flying driver's goggles, stretched out on the campstool like a contented hound in sunshine. "But buck up about it, old chap, we have early dinner reservations in an hour."

" _Ja._ I will, of course. _Ja..."_

"Hold up." Seeing Otto Lauda, the irrespressible, uncrushable Otto, fidget with the pockets of his driving coat like a dithering schoolboy gave Henry a moment of pure glee. "You _do_ know the girl's name, don't you, Otto?"

"Don't be stupid, Harry, of course Otto at least knows the _name_ of..." Charlie, catching the black glare sent in his direction, trailed off into silence. He blinked. "Lord."

Otto swiped out with a Germanic curse that Henry didn't dare translate for the benefit of Burton. Besides, he was too busy laughing to concentrate on the nuances of changing from one language to another.

"Christ, Otto, only you!"

" _Schweinhund_!"

"You tumble into love and you don't know her name?"

" _Dummkopf_!"

"No, no, dear chap." Henry flicked the butt of his cigarette to the ground and kicked it under his heel. Otto, looking more and more like a demented hedgehog with his sweat-soaked blonde hair stuck up in spikes of frustration, glared at the lanky Englishman. "The only idiot in this particular situation is you. For God's sake man, she could be married. Or a lunatic."

"A nun- Ah! Watch it!" Charlie ducked a second time as the leather driving gloves were hurled in his direction. "Otto!"

"She is positively not a nun. And she is not married. She cannot be. Cannot." Bereft of all other throwing implements, Otto clenched his fists at his side. His moustache, beautifully trimmed, was tufts from being chewed into frustration. "For I am going to marry her myself."

Henry pealed out a laugh. "You? Married? Pull the other one, Lauda."

"I pull nothing. I do not," Otto spat the words from under his moustache with what little dignity a half-dressed driver could command. "Even grasp, hold or _tug_. _Also_ , I have made up my mind. I am lost. Finished. _Fertig, absolut fertig."_

Charlie exchanged a glance with Henry, his eyebrows raised in question. Henry pursed his lips. He ran his fingers over his mouth, as though he missed the comfort of a cigarette to take the tension from the situation.

In front of his two friends, Otto Lauda slumped his shoulders. Without a glance for the snowy whiteness of his driving coat, he let his knees crumple under him and fell back against the idling body of the motor.

" _Absolut fertig._ " He said again. Despite the forlorn note in his voice, the German driver's blue eyes were starry and hot. If he didn't suspect otherwise, Henry would have turned to Burton and told him to prepare Mr Lauda for a hell-dinger of a fever. The symptoms looked uncommonly close to the common cold.

Henry delivered up a fervent, private prayer that they were not quite so infectious.

"All right." Taking his cue from Otto, Henry Talbot slid down to the springy grass of their little nook. He stretched out his tired limbs and crossed his hands over his stomach. The shading of the tree was cast across his eyes and it made a pleasant change from the blistering sunshine of the racetrack. All the better to puzzle this through. "All right. You're in lust-"

"Love."

"I stand corrected. You do know best. Love, then. With a girl."

"Lady."

"So sure of that?"

"Charlie..."

"Pax, men. Pax. Otto's entitled to his opinions."

For want of anything better, Henry plucked a blade of grass from the ground and stuck the stem between his teeth. Sometimes, when confronted with the implausible, the only recourse a man could have was a run-down of known facts. "You're in love with a girl at dinner. At breakfast, the only love of your life was Freda there."

He plucked the grass from between his teeth and pointed to the sleek green Sunbeam racing car at Otto's back. Dark eyes gleamed with satiric amusement. "Otto, old chap, where in God's name did you find a woman to win and wife in between breakfast and dinner?"

"Lunch and dinner." Charlie put in. He leant his elbows on his knees and bowed forward. His light blue eyes went pale with interest now the moment for funning was past. "Otto attacked lunch like a savage. And you had three portions of desert."

"It was a good desert." The German driver sighed, his own hands crossed over his stomach, enviably slim despite Charlie's accusations of gluttony. "But it is nothing. Nothing will be sweet again."

Henry caught Charlie's eyes, smothered his grin at their dramatic roll up to the heavens. Sensible and English and matter-of-fact to his toenails, Charlie had never learnt to be comfortable with Otto's European passions. Henry, possessing a mother who held both Italian and Irish blood, was more tolerant.

"She's a lady whose name is unknown, whose situation is unknown and whose face-"

"Is that of an angel-"

"Lord." Charlie muttered.

"- is also, as yet, unknown." Henry pulled out the grass stem and contemplated the green length. "So we are placed in a conundrum."

"A befuddlement." Charlie added.

"An enigma."

"A mystery upon a puzzle."

"A-"

" _Das ist genug_! Enough! You… you vultures!"

"I say, Charlie." Henry let out a lazy drawl. "I fancy Otto is upset."

"Upset?" Recovering like a bolt of lightning from his dejection, Otto sprang to his feet. The caped driving coat swirled around his feet like a duellist's cloak. "I? No! Me, I am angry, I am furious. My friends, my so-called companions, they treat my heart as a joke. _Zur Hölle mit ihr!_ Me, I will go and find my angel and never, never I say, will I say that I know two such libertines, such fools, such… how you _verdammte_ English say? Dead gooses!"

"Dead ducks." Henry offered. "And geese, not gooses, old boy."

" _Geh zum Teufel, Arschgeige!"_

"He has the words of a true poet, doesn't he, Charlie?"

"Hard to see how any woman can resist."

"Shakespeare in a driving coat." Henry rolled over onto his side. "Romeo in goggles."

"I despise you."

"My heart!" Charlie clutched his chest. "Talbot, how can we recover?"

"I despise you, both of you. I will spit on your graves. I will see your cars ground to matchsticks."

"Now, steady on, Otto. Keep it personal by all means but don't take your failures out on the chariots."

"They are rust-filled, inelegant, heavy _carts_ and you, you dead ducklings, you _Tollpatsche…_ clods! You, Harry, swine of the English, and you, Charlie, you… you automaton. You have lost my respect. My love. I tell you, I am alone and my heart, it is broken and I will never see you cross the finish line again, never!"

"Lord." There was a touch of awe in Charlie's epitaph of disgust. Leaning back on the stool, his arms folded across his chest, the brown Englishman blinked at his impassioned friend in astonishment. "I've never been called an automaton before."

"Then," Otto declared, ripping his hand from its vicious wrangling through the dishevelled blonde hair. "It has been waiting too long! _Also!_ "

"All right." Since Charlie was sitting with his mouth gaping open and Burton had taken the opportunity of his masters' bickering to retreat and snatch a quick smoke of his own, Henry saw the only way to peace was the route familiar and liquid. "Otto, pax?"

" _Geh zum_ …"

"Yes, yes, you may damn us both to the devil all evening long. But it has been a long day, a heavy race…"

"Of which, I, myself, am the victor."

Henry smothered a grin. The deepest throes of unrequited passion couldn't turn Otto from savouring his win like a peacock spreading his feathers. His friend was an unrepentant competitor. He even raced to finish his breakfast first.

"Well, in that case you can buy the first round. Because angels or devils or whatever heavenly bodies are hopping around this place be damned but I'm parched. Charlie, old boy, fancy a beer?"

The brown-haired Englishman perked up his head. "Gröstl's?"

"Why not? Otto? Drown your sorrows?"

The blonde moustache twitched, as though sniffing out the gentle mockery in Henry's bland question. "I will never eat again." He repeated, his voice rising up on his dignity. "But for our friendship, I will drink, _ja_."

"That's the spirit." Henry clapped Otto on his caped shoulder and winked across at Charlie Rodgers. "Everything for the greater good."

"And perhaps one slice of _küchen_." Otto rubbed his stomach, a frown of consideration dipping on his face. "For politeness, _verstehtst du._ "

"Lord…" Charlie muttered from behind them and Henry had to fight back a laugh.

"Just for politeness." He assured his friend as they started the long saunter away from the racetrack to the comfortable shabbiness of Gröstl's rambling farmhouse inn.

* * *

 **Can I just have the Henry/Otto show running all day?**

 **Hope you enjoyed it and thank you for reading!**


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